A 10-year old complained to her mom of stomach ache. And when they got it checked, neither the mother nor the kid saw what was coming next. The minor was pregnant. The mother had previously reported that her husband was sexually abusing her daughter, but the authorities turned a blind eye to it.
To add to their misery, the 10-year-old is now struggling to get an abortion done because of the strict anti-abortion laws of Paraguay. Despite a plea by her mother and an international outcry over the decision, senior medical officers of the Catholic country have said that the abortion cannot happen, unless she develops life-threatening complications.
Healthcare programme director at the Ministry of Public Health and Wellness, Lida Sosa told The Guardian, “Right now, there is no reason to interrupt the pregnancy. In fact, given the stage of the pregnancy, it’s even more dangerous for the girl to undergo a procedure without a well-considered medical, obstetrical evaluation.”
The kid lives with two of her siblings, her mother and her stepdad in a rented room in Luque, Paraguay.
That’s not all that is wrong with the case.
While the girl has been taken to a shelter, her mother has been imprisoned after being accused of failing in her duty of taking care of the kid. If that was not enough, a judge is now considering adding a further charge of being an accomplice in rape. All this while the stepdad is on the run.
The case has created a furore among child activists and feminists across the world and rightly so. Who rejects permission to abort a child when the victim is a 10-year-old and arrests her mother who was the first one to report the case? Clearly, something is majorly wrong with the Paraguay government.
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